


Strange Places

by Lysces



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Flashbacks, Gen, POV Wanda Maximoff, The Raft Prison (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 07:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14911442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lysces/pseuds/Lysces
Summary: Wanda woke up drugged, disoriented, and alone.  What followed illustrates why it's an awful idea to put Wanda Maximoff in a cage.





	Strange Places

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [MaximoffFicExchange2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MaximoffFicExchange2018) collection. 



> For the Maximoff Fic Exchange 2018.
> 
>  
> 
> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> A canon divergence where Wanda breaks free from the Raft in CA:CW. 
> 
> (My only additional request is a brief nod [if possible] to the twins' jewish and romani heritage because mcu canon is bad in that respect).

Wanda woke up in a strange place.

She was laying on concrete, her right arm wedged painfully between her body and the ground.

 

* * *

 

_Wanda was no stranger to waking up in strange places.  After their parents were killed and their home destroyed, Wanda and Pietro had been just another pair of homeless street children.  There had been the occasional stretch of a couple weeks where they could stay in the same place, but more often than not they were chased from one place to another by violence or by hunger.  For years, her bed was her coat, and her home was her brother._

_Pietro called them children of the Diaspora.  Privately, she had called herself Wanda the Wanderer.  It was a little happier, and she could do with a little more happiness._

 

* * *

 

There was a noise far away.  Part of her brain recognized it, but that part seemed muted.  She listened, but her brain stubbornly refused to make sense of it.

It wasn’t an urgent sound.  She would know the sound of an explosion, or of gunfire, or of Pietro telling her they had to move, _now_.

 

* * *

 

_There was gunfire in the distance.  Wanda could tell by the sound that it was far enough away to be safely ignored._

_The cloth tied over her mouth and nose kept her from inhaling the worst of the smoke, but her eyes still smarted.  She didn’t much care if the other protesters saw her tears.  They understood._

_People living in war zones understood grief.  They understood rage too.  When they saw a dirty, underfed teenage protester with burning eyes, they didn’t mistake her tears for weakness._

_People living in war zones were not weak.  If they had been, they wouldn’t be living._

_When the gunfire drew closer, Pietro grabbed her by the hand and took off running.  They had been in this city for a few months, so they knew the streets.  They only had to run a few streets over to reach safety._

_Or so they thought._

_The man who approached them was unremarkable.  He was middle aged and white, and he didn’t look like someone who skipped meals or labored with his hands._

_“Where are you two going?”_

_Pietro regarded him with suspicion.  It was the only way Pietro knew how to react to strangers.  “They’re shooting at the protesters again.  I’m getting my sister away from it.”_

_“Not a very effective protest, is it?” he asked, as though it did not matter much to him._

_Wanda bristled.  “We don’t exactly have a more effective option.”_

_“Do you not?”  He looked her hard in the eyes.  His eyes were dark gray and heavily lined, and she felt oddly pinned by his stare.  “It would take tremendous power to drive the chaos from your streets.  I know the way to such power, and it doesn’t lie in these flimsy protests.  You too could have the power to end these conflicts if you join my organization.”_

_“What organization?” Pietro demanded.  “And who are you?”_

 

* * *

 

She opened her eyes.  Bars swam into focus.

She was in a cage.

 

* * *

 

_They had been wary; they were street kids after all._

_Dr. List had given an answer to all of their questions, and more.  The power he offered was so far beyond what they could accomplish as a couple angry protesters.  He was offering power on par with that of the Avengers._

_Wanda had been skeptical, and she had expected Pietro to be even more so.  To her surprise, her brother had turned to her and pronounced it worth the risk._

_“I hate it, Wanda, but he’s right.  What are we accomplishing being shot at during protests?  No one is listening to our shouting; no one cares for our lives.  We are powerless, and we don’t have a clear way forward to establishing peace.  I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting to survive.  I don’t want that for you either.”_

_In the end, he had swayed her.  She had always trusted her brother enough to follow where he led.  And in the beginning, it was alright.  They were only two of many volunteers, all like them, all young and passionate.  They didn’t realize that they had walked into a trap until it snapped closed._

 

* * *

 

She reached within herself for her power, and it slipped out of her grip.  A shiver ran up her spine.

 

* * *

 

_They were the last two.  Everyone else was dead, killed by the power of the glowing spear.  Wanda huddled on her cot with her head on Pietro’s shoulder while they waited to die.  He had already apologized for bringing her into this, and she had already forgiven him.  In the end, it hadn’t been his bad judgment that had claimed their lives; Wanda had felt like she was a breath away from dying since the first shell hit their home back when they were ten years old._

_“You’re warm,” Pietro commented, pressing his lips to her forehead as their mother used to when they were sick.  “I think you have a fever.”_

_Wanda hummed quietly, letting her eyes drift closed.  “I think it’s just warm in here.  Do you mind?”_

_“Never.”  He hugged her closer.  She could feel the tension in his body, the fear clawing at him.  He was vibrating with it._

_He was…actually vibrating._

_“Pietro?” she asked, but he had noticed it too and pulled away from her.  He sat up straight, staring at his hands.  They shook so fast that they were a blur._

_“Is this it?” he asked, voice hitching._

_Wanda could feel her own fear coil in her belly, and it really was too hot in their cell.  She reached out towards her brother, but he disappeared before she could touch him._

_She cried out in surprise, but he was only on the other side of the room.  She stared at him, wide-eyed.  “How did you get there?”_

_Pietro mirrored her shock.  “I ran.  You’re—are you well?”_

_He was looking at her hands, and she glanced down to see they glowed a deep scarlet.  She felt a shiver run up her spine._

 

* * *

 

Her cage was small, and beyond the bars the world was fuzzy.  She sat up, and the world within the bars went fuzzy.

 

* * *

 

_Two months into their stay with HYDRA, an agent had slapped Wanda across the face.  She didn’t remember his name, or what had set him off, or Pietro retaliating so quickly that the whiplash had killed the man.  All she remembered was the sharp sting of pain and the painful fallout._

_They moved him to a separate cage, but he was close enough that she could still feel him.  She could feel him now in a way she never could before.  As twins, they’d always shared a strong connection.  That connection had only strengthened as they became each other’s only family and sole constant in an increasingly dangerous world.  But this was new.  This was power._

_Wanda felt him breathe.  She felt him sleep.  She felt his fear, his frustration, his despair.  At times she lost track of where her own heart ended and his began._

_After he killed the HYDRA agent, Pietro wasn’t quite the same.  It had taken her no time at all to recognize the change in her brother and even less to realize they were drugging him to keep him compliant.  To keep him afraid._

 

* * *

 

There was something in her water.

It took Wanda a long time to realize—much too long.  She was uncertain how long she had been in this cage, and she didn’t remember how she had gotten there.  It may have been hours or weeks.  Was this HYDRA?  The Sokovian military?  The Avengers?  Were there other prisoners?  She thought she heard voices at times, but she couldn’t be sure.

But she was sure they were slipping her something in her water, and it made the world flat and muted.  She was out of focus, barely aware of the straitjacket hugging her arms to her body or the collar pressing cold against her throat.

The next time they brought her water, she refused to drink.  She refused to move or to open her eyes.  Perhaps they thought she was dead; they didn’t force the water on her.

 

* * *

 

_Wanda played with her power.  She knew she was being watched, so she made it dance red across her hands.  She levitated little blocks and gave them something to look at._

_Power was so much more than what was visible on the surface.  The floating blocks and flickering colors were but the tip of the iceberg._

_Her light show cast the walls of her cell in red, hiding the fact that she was in the walls too.  Wanda felt through them, pushing and pulling at the molecules to see how they were held together.  Her formal education had stopped when she was ten, but here she seemed able to work out the physics simply by intuition.  In another life, this insight might have prompted her into academia.  In this life, it just made her heart beat faster._

_When she finally walked out of her cell, it was through a door of her own creation._

 

* * *

 

Clarity returned in bits and pieces.  The smell of metal.  The memory of their fight.  The sour taste in her mouth.  The voice that she recognized as Clint Barton’s.  The faint whisper of her power shifting in her chest.

She pretended to sleep as she stoked that tiny flicker into a roaring inferno.

 

* * *

 

_Her power ripped out of her with enough violence to put her throat-shredding scream to shame.  Wanda hadn’t known it could do that, and at any other moment she would have been awed and afraid._

_She hardly noticed it._

_She had felt his breath stutter.  She had felt his knees go weak.  She had felt his fear melt away into a shocked realization, a false calm.  She now felt him fall to the ground._

_Wanda felt every single bullet that tore into Pietro’s body, and she thought she’d been shot._

_She didn’t realize she hadn’t until she felt him slip quietly away, her soul scrabbling to hold onto him.  But his life was like water in her hands—it ran out._

 

* * *

 

There were three others Wanda could hear: Clint, Sam, and Scott.  They said little; they sounded bitter and exhausted.  She didn’t hear Steve or Barnes, and she could only hope they had gotten to where they needed to be.

She didn’t know where she was, but it didn’t matter.  She was leaving.  They were all leaving, whole and hale, for she had lost too many people already.

“Clint,” she croaked, her voice gritty with disuse.  She struggled against the straitjacket to pull herself into a sitting position, and she looked at him with eyes leaking scarlet fire.  “We need to be Avengers now.”  She saw the instant he understood.

 

* * *

 

_He had said to her once, crouching in a ruined building while the world was falling apart but before it had properly fallen, “If you step out that door, you are an Avenger.”_

 

* * *

 

They were fools for thinking they could contain her.  Escaping bondage was the legacy of her forefathers; it was in her very blood.

The straitjacket went first, and then the collar, cast off like so much tissue paper.  The bars were ripped away and hurled across the room.  An alarm sounded.  Reinforced glass shattered.  She saw Clint pick up a few pieces of it as they were running out.  Assassins, like street kids, made do with what they could get their hands on.

As they encountered resistance, Wanda put it to sleep.  She didn’t want to kill anyone today.  After Lagos, she never wanted to kill anyone ever again.

Sam took the lead, and Wanda followed him without much worry for where he was leading.  She trusted him to lead in the right direction like she trusted Steve to lead, like she had trusted her brother.  Scott ran at her side and she sensed Clint bringing up the rear, watching her back.  She didn't need to glance behind her—armed with nothing but glass and his own wits, she'd bet on Clint over anyone in this hellhole.  It was still a thrill to be a part of a team like the one she had, so different though it was to her past team of two.

When they stopped to fiddle with controls, she closed her eyes and felt out for approaching people and put them to sleep before they could even make it into the room.  She opened doors and walls whenever their way was blocked, until at last she felt wind on her face.

The wind tasted like tears, and she soon saw why.  They were in the middle of the ocean on a massive metal raft.

“We want that one,” Clint said, gesturing to a small plane stowed inside a hangar on the Raft’s surface.  Wanda liberated it carefully, and they moved on, buffeted by the wind but firm on their course to freedom.

She watched the Raft shrink and disappear into the distance, and a faint smile broke across her face as the power within her pulsed.  She was neither alone, nor weak, nor in a cage.  She didn’t know where they would go next, but Wanda the Wanderer was unafraid of whatever strange place she might wake up in tomorrow.


End file.
